Andy Burnham has called on Sir Keir Starmer to scrap the two-child benefit cap, becoming the latest high profile Labour figure to call on the prime minister to change the policy.
In the clearest sign yet that the Greater Manchester mayor is considering a return to Westminster to challenge the prime minister for the leadership, he said the benefit cap is “arbitrary” and could not be justified.
He described the policy as “the worst of Westminster” and said he “never supported it”.
“It can’t be defended, because it’s arbitrary,” he told The Guardian. “Why does the third kid just get cut out or get less, or why do all three if you’ve got three kids?”
The intervention will be seen as a direct challenge to Sir Keir on the eve of Labour conference, with questions swirling about the beleaguered prime minister’s future.
Scrapping the two-child benefit cap is a priority for restless backbench MPs, who feel Labour in power has not done enough to tackle child poverty.
Mr Burnham, who is one of three children and whose mother received child benefit, said: “My parents always said to me something that has definitely guided me in my life – you can never visit the sins of the parents on the kids.
“It’s just a ridiculous thing that the state is kind of making these sort of judgmental interventions into families’ lives and saying, ‘Yes, it’s OK for some kids to have a lower standard of living’, because that is family decisions that their parents took, is absolutely abhorrent.
“It cannot be justified. It’s the worst of Westminster, that’s what it is.”
The intervention comes ahead of the publication of a child poverty taskforce, with an action plan drawn up by Sir Keir’s top officials and ministers.
The top recommendation is expected to be the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap.
The cap, imposed by Tory former chancellor George Osborne, prevents parents from claiming benefits for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017.
And it comes after Mr Burnham said Labour MPs are privately urging him to challenge the prime minister for the Labour leadership. He accused Downing Street of creating a “climate of fear” and said “wholesale change” was needed to see off the “existential” threat of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Pressure was already mounting on Sir Keir ahead of Labour’s conference, with senior Labour MPs calling for him to announce plans to scrap the cap in time for November’s Budget.
Dame Meg Hillier, chair of parliament’s Treasury committee, said on Thursday it would be “unconscionable” if Labour failed to alleviate child poverty, pointing to scrapping the two-child cap as the most effective measure.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the senior Labour MP said: “I’ve been looking at it in detail, and I’m convinced that the quickest and easiest way to lift 350,000 children out of poverty and 700,000 children out of deep poverty, would be to really pick up the cap.”
She pointed to the last Labour government’s record on child poverty, adding: “It was unconscionable to me and many colleagues and people I know up and down the country, particularly in my constituency, to think that we’re not going to be investing in our children.”
She said: “Whatever the moral and ethical reasons about the children who are sharing shoes and clothes to go to school and taking alternate visits to playing football because they’ve only got one pair of boots to share, that sort of thing … Actually, there’s also hard facts and figures about why we need to invest in our young people.”
Asked whether she believes the measure will be in the chancellor’s Budget, Dame Meg said: “I would hope so.”
She backed calls from former prime minister Gordon Brown to introduce reforms to gambling taxes in order to generate the £3.2bn needed to scrap the cap.
But the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is already scrambling to find tens of billions of pounds in tax hikes in the Budget.
At a cost of around £3bn per year by the end of the decade, scrapping the two-child cap will force Ms Reeves into even more difficult choices when she sets out her fiscal plans.
